musing

When the Chamsin Breaks

Israel is a strange country when it comes to weather. A tropical country, some might say – all I know is that it’s mad-as-a-hatter weather over here. Near the ocean, where I live, it could be hotter than hell, but up in the hills of Jerusalem it’ll be cool at night, the desert not far from those hills will be even cooler, the mountain in the North will be covered in snow and the border in the South will be even warmer than the ocean but dry.

Yesterday and today we had what is called a “chamsin” here on the coast. A chamsin is a few days when the weather is perceptibly hotter than normal, usually quite dry, with sandy winds that blow dust into the houses. Everyone leaves their windows open in the hope of coaxing a non-existent breeze in, and the wardrobe changes appropriately to tank tops, shorts and sandals. In Los Angeles, this weather would be called “earthquake weather” because there is an unsettling quality to it – all day, it feels as if something is about to snap, as if the air cannot stand any more of the still and silent electricity that seems to crackle in it.

Then evening comes along. The first evening of a chamsin might be just as hot and horrid as the day was. The second night might be the same, making people toss and turn in their sweat-soaked sheets as they try to rest. But eventually, the chamsin breaks, as it did tonight. When it does, it’s as if the world breathes a sigh of relief – there, feel that breeze? It’s over, at least for a few more hours. There’s air that doesn’t sting anymore, the windows are open for a reason now, and you can finally get some sleep.

Voice and Tense

I realized today something that I’ve realized many times before, something which gets me more excited about college than ever – I need to learn how to write. What I mean is that I need to really study and practice in an orderly fashion, with someone to read my work and tell me that “this is good” and “this is bad” and “this needs some more work.” I love this blog, and I’m proud of myself for keeping it up – my track record on keeping organized blogs is disastrous, to say the least. The fact that I’m keeping this one up is due to my true devotion and love of practicing my writing.

But, as I was saying, I need to study and learn methods for it. The reason I realized this today was because I was spending my time at work, as I usually do, with trying to plan a new story. This new story is a sort of young-adult type thing, something that I decided to try after remember how much I love Sarah Dessen’s books. I started writing about my character from the third-person point of view, but after a page or so I realized that it sounded wrong. It wasn’t what I’d pictured in my head.

So I changed the voice, and tried writing her from the first person point of view: her speaking about herself. Once again, it sounded wrong because I was using past tense, and it sounded like any second she would be lapsing into current events. I realized that I don’t know how to write past tense but make it sound like the present, and not like the retelling of a story.

And so, whether or not I major in creative writing, I’m definitely going to take some writing courses when I go to college. I can’t wait!

On a completely unrelated subject – I find it highly amusing that WordPress, a blogging website, highlights the word “blog” as a misspell in its spell-checker program. WordPress is another word that is listed as misspelled.

Cathartic Description

A white blaze of fire seems to travel from the nape of my neck and all the way up to the crown of my skull. It spreads as it goes, reaching places in my face and bone structure that I’m normally not even aware of. There are so many parts of the ear that I never notice, but when the pain creeps up the side of my face I realize just how complex the cartilage of the ear is and how soft and susceptible to pain the skin right behind it is.

My jaw is even more attuned than I am. I can almost hear it protesting and groaning as the painful fire shoots flame after licking flame into it. I can feel the long bone, stretching from right next to my ear and down almost to my chin, and I can feel the creaks in it as I try to open my mouth wide enough to yawn the inevitable nauseous yawn that is caused by the painful flames.

My eyebrow and eye seem to be warring for my ultimate attention, each begging to be soothed by the firm press of a finger or palm. The eyebrow and the bone behind it win out, because the poor eye gets even more painful when given over to the practice of being rubbed firmly by the knuckles of my fingers.

Writing about it doesn’t really help, but it seems like a better way of dealing with the pain than banging my head against a wall.

Superpowers

As countless and timeless stories tell us, we humans have always striven for something more than our mortal talents. Stories as old as the Greek and Roman myths tell of people who had the gift of seeing the future or supernatural strength or cunning that took them far. Stories in the bible tell of the gift of speaking with animals or of healing or of being able to talk to god. We’ve always been and always will be fascinated with things that are beyond the every-day things that we can do.

I’ve heard many people ask each other what superpower they’d choose if they could. This question has always stumped me.

Mind reading? Oh no, way too horrible. I don’t want to know what everyone is thinking, because most thoughts would probably be either extremely tedious [“I’m hungry… What should I eat? Yum, grilled cheese!”] or disturbing [“What I wouldn’t do to that guy… *Rated R thoughts*”].

Invisibility? Seems depressing, in a way. Sure, it would be useful for spying on people or stalking them, but I wonder if it would be that easy to turn it on and off like that. Plus, stalking should involve more effort than that or it’s not worth it, right?

Super strength? Meh – Buffy Summers is cool, but I’ve yet to face a vampire and so I don’t really know whose face I’d want to bash in anyhow. Girl-power would be cool, but I don’t want to be scary…

I suppose the only superpower I’d really welcome would be the ability to fly at will. Being able to soar around would be wonderful, and I can’t think of a drawback to it. But really, that’s the only super-power that I can see as being worth anything.

So… how about you?

Fairy Dust

Inside a snow-globe that sits in a shop in a corner of a tourist town buried deep under snow and constant cheer, there are three fairies dancing.
The fairies dance to a melody that only they can hear, trapped as they are in a roughly blown glassy ball, cheaply attached to a plastic bottom and full of a strange liquid that is neither water nor oil.
The fairies, their painted faces smiling at each other in their silent and stationary dance, will forever be suspended in a happy moment, in a dream of a movement which never has and never will exist.
If you look at the fairies you might get the illusion that they’re about to move – that they’re really just one moment away from jumping up and beginning to dance in truth, listening to the music which only they can hear. Looking at them, you might wish that they were alive, because such happiness seems to be wasted on such beings that aren’t alive and never will be.
If you pick up the glass globe and shake it, the fairy-dust and glitter and the few flakes of snow that litter the bottom will begin to swirl and you’ll be able to see, for a moment only, the fairies whirling around along with the glitter, laughing and singing. The moment you take a closer look, though, the movement will cease, and you’ll never know if you really saw what you thought you saw or if you just wanted so badly for the fairies to be alive that they obliged your imagination for a split second.

Lucy’s Diary, May 27th

May 27th, Night, Library

Dear Diary,

Something is going on with R. I’m getting worried. He was supposed to be getting better, but when I visited him today I found him trying to claw his way across the floor. He was sweaty and feverish and I’m positive he was delirious at the time. The doctors aren’t telling me much, because they don’t have proof that I’m a relative.

Diary, I’m scared. I’m terrified, in fact. I feel like every flicker of a light or creak in the floor is someone coming to… to something – kill me, poison me, force me to tell them about R or about how far my parents spread their research on the Parazelli.

Forgive me, my thoughts are completely scattered tonight. I feel a knot in my stomach, and I’m pretty certain that if I try to get up now my whole body will cramp up due to my muscles being so tense.

I don’t know who to ask for help – I don’t know how to help R. But I have to help him. I have to find out what’s

Oh no. Oh no. This is too much. This is just TOO much. My phone just rang, and I answered it, thinking it was R calling me for reassurance that I’ll be there tomorrow morning. Instead, it was his doctor. He said he found my number on a note next to R’s phone and called me. R’s being poisoned. The doctor said that the police are coming in first thing in the morning to interview people at the hospital, because he was being poisoned with snake venom, which is not something that could accidentally have gotten into R’s food by a negligent nurse.

The doctor says R is going to be fine, they’re pumping antidotes into his system. But that’s not what I’m worried about anymore. The Parazelli must be very close, and they’re obviously sending us a message. It’s not like they thought R would die of poison while he’s IN A HOSPITAL. No, this is a warning.

Ok, I have a plan. Not a very elaborate plan, but a plan nonetheless. Something to get me through the night. The plan is this: talk to R tomorrow and figure this out. Yes. Good plan.

I think I better go to my room, Diary, and try to catch some sleep. And tomorrow I shall set my brilliant plan in motion.

Yup.

Lucy

After a Separation

I missed reading fantasy.

Don’t get me wrong. I enjoyed reading Jane Austen more than I can say. I adored the snide remarks and hidden humor and the endless subtle sarcasm that permeates her language and her characters. I adored the descriptions of situations and the way she mocked them so thoroughly without ever once denouncing them obviously. I love reading books about the real world, with characters that were believable and made sense and in whose shoes I could put myself.

But the rapture, the utter ecstasy of losing oneself in a world so extremely foreign from one’s own – that is something I will never be able to give up. Letting my mind run rampant in forests, encircle itself with magic, leap up on horses and grapple with an enemy – all those things I let myself get immersed in as I delve into the latest installment of whichever fantasy novel I’m reading; those things bring magic into my life.

I really, truly, missed reading fantasy.

Surreal

My mind is blank.

My mind is blank.

My mind is blank.

But out of the darkness, or perhaps the blinding whiteness, that is the blankness of my mind, I settle on an odd image – it is the image of a desert. Endless dunes of sand, a warm night breeze ruffling the sands around my ankles – but the sky, the sky is what my blank mind focuses on. The sky which is full of a myriad stars, thousands upon thousands of them twinkling in every direction which my eyes can focus on. The stars are spread out every which way, the thick band of the milky way shining brightly through the middle, and the moon’s brightness taking away a patch of stars as it outshines them. So many of those stars don’t exist anymore.

I feel like I should want to be the Little Prince, fallen out of the sky and managing not to worry about my fate. I wish I could worry only about wanting a sheep and a glass cover for my rose, and a snake to bite me and take me back home. I feel like there would be something peaceful about saving someone and bringing him to a well and then leaving him forever, with only the memory of laughter to make the stars bright to him.

My mind is blank.

My mind is blank.

My mind is blank.

Distraction

A buzzing drone in my ear, I struggled to open my mouth in anything other than a pointless flapping and ranting of facts and figures. As my mind struggled to stay with the task of solving problems, complaints and mistakes, my fingers itched to be of use, and dragged my mind elsewhere, time after time.
It was hard to believe that the despair that had overtaken my mind and emotion just hours earlier seemed to have dissipated and dissolved under those same itching fingers, those same thoughts that were causing my mind to wander and my mouth to smile more often than not. The feeling of my fingers flying across the small pages in those precious few minutes between the chattering of voices in my ear – ah! The best feeling in the world, to be for once creating instead of venting, making up instead of putting down facts.
The ink flowing from the pen seemed to give birth to new ideas and characters with every twitch of my fingers, clutching the pen so tightly that my arm began to ache before long. My mind flowed with names, situations, ideas, friendships, worlds – all so far and free from my own that they made me dizzy just to think about them and the control and power my make-believing mind would have on them.
The hours passed quicker than they ever had before – even when I could not write for an hour or two at a time, my brain never ceased to create and invent and add flourishes to the characters and their unique traits and situations. It was the best distraction, and I’m not minded to forget it any time soon.

Hidden Wish

There are wishes that are too dear to the heart to be able to give up. At the same time, however, these same wishes, because of being so dear, are often hidden or lied about or concealed even from their own wisher. Wishes like these are the ones that are important. The wisher conceals them from him or herself because he or she knows that facing the wish, trying to accomplish it, will only make it like all the other wishes before – it will be gloried, it will be striven for, it will be boasted of, but eventually it will fall to the wayside like a dusty old garment, too worn out to be of use to the traveler anymore.

These wishes stay close to the heart, and will unconsciously jump into the mind of the wisher and into his or her actions once in a while. The wisher, if sincere, will do all in their power to avoid the seriousness of the wish, will immediately laugh it off as a fancy, as a thing which can never be, while secretly wanting it so much that he or she would give up almost everything to be able to fulfill it.

Why is it that wishes brought to light are so often abandoned? One cannot presume to know – but what is certain, at least when it comes to this humble blogger’s opinion, is that the more serious one is about one’s wish, the more likely it is to be lost amongst the everyday. Better to supress and let it emerge on one with all the slowness of natural progress rather than force it upon and into one’s life with vulgar flashes of neon light.